December 19, 2024
Government shutdown tomorrow? Looking that way…
Ugh – I don’t even know where to start.
Well — let me start with the fact as i always do.
A vote to keep the government open just failed in the United States House of Representatives. Because of the way Speaker Johnson brought this bill up – it needed two-thirds of the House to vote yes. The final vote was –
174 to 235
38 Republicans and 197 Democrats voted no. 172 Republicans and 2 Democrats voted yes. One lawmaker voted present and 20 members did not vote.
Why did all those Republicans vote against a bill that was brought up by the Republican House Speaker and was supported by president-elect Donald Trump. Well – because of what Trump and Elon Musk did last night. See the fact is – as I have been reporting for months – Democrats and Republicans have been working on a bipartisan deal to keep the government open. When they failed to do their job in September lawmakers kicked the can down the road until December 20th. Well December 20th is tomorrow that is the day the government will shut down unless congress comes to a deal to keep the government open. Earlier this week Speaker Johnson announced there was a deal to keep the government open. That deal was agreed on by Democrats and Republicans in both the House and the Senate we were good to go. But as I reported in this video last week – that deal was for a continuing resolution to keep the government open under status quo funding through March 14th of next year. For the record – republicans hate continuing resolutions so Speaker Johnson was counting on Democrats to support this bill…get it over the finish line and keep the government open.
Well – last night – just hours before this deal was going to be passed — Elon Musk started railing against it posting all these things on his X account. Then the president elect jumped on the bandwagon and said Republicans need to tank the deal. He said — instead –Republicans need to pass a “clean CR” and wait for it – add a suspension of the debt ceiling. Just so you know — suspending the debt ceiling does not necessarily authorize any new spending – it just allows the Treasury Department to pay the bills Congress already racked up. But there’s a bit of a double standard here. Shocking I know. When this same debt ceiling fight came up in 2023, then candidate Donald Trump told Republicans they absolutely could not support a debt ceiling increase. He said it was a horrible idea and because of his opposition at the time we almost had the very first default on our national debt. Now – that Trump is about to take office and the debt ceiling deadline is going to fall in his term – he wants Republicans to just suspend the debt limit until January 30 of 2027. Trump said on his social media page that any republican who votes against this bill will be primaried.
Well – Speaker Mike Johnson scrapped the deal he had cut to keep the government open and scrambled to cobble together a new continuing resolution called the American Relief Act. That bill will keep the government open until march of 2025, will provide $110 billion in disaster aid, aid for farmers for another year and will suspend the debt ceiling until January 30 of 2027.
Obviously Democrats said that wasn’t the deal they agreed to. They’re cool with the CR but this whole debt ceiling thing came out of nowhere was not part of the plan. So Speaker Johnson lost Democrat support. But – what’s interesting about what just happened on the House floor is those 38 republicans also said no. They said we are absolutely not going to give congress an unlimited spending limit on the taxpayer’s credit card for anyone including for Donald Trump especially without significant spending cuts included.
So now what?
Who knows. I’ll keep you posted. But time is ticking and the government is shutting down at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday morning.
